Week 1: Banana Cream Pie

The first pie I would attempt to bake was banana cream, which is definitely an old favorite of mine. My thinking was, since this is not a double crust pie, it would be easier. Just mix the ingredients and pour them into the crust layer. Easy, right?

Not so easy. While the recipes I looked at promised baking times of 15 minutes, the prep work was actually considerable longer considering I didn’t have any experience on what order to do some of the tasks.

One of my daughter’s found this recipe. I promised to be a great “old fashioned” style of banana creme. I’m not sure what the new style is – maybe kale and flax seed. Or gluten-free. Anyway, here are the ingredients:

I began by baking the crust. I knew this needed to be done before I could proceed to pour the filling into the pie. Since I am a beginner, I used a pre-made crust. We’ll get to real homemade crusts later!

Combining the ingredients was simple, once I had them measured out. It did take awhile to bring the custard mixture to a boil because I kept the heat too low. I was afraid of burning it, but it turns out you can have the heat surprisingly high for the milk/sugar/cornstarch mixture. After that,I added the eggs and vanilla extract and cooked for a couple more minutes before pouring it into a bowl to stick inside the fridge. In hindsight, I could have saved time by cooking my crust at this point since the custard needed to be refrigerated for 30+ minutes. Instead, I rested and watched a half-hour sitcom.

Eventually, it was time to whip the cream, admittedly, something I have hummed along to while Devo sang about it but not anything I have ever personally done. Using a mixer and a really deep bowl, I used a few tips from a pro and before long, I had a frothy cream to put on top of the pie. I added half the custard to the pie crust, and applied a layer of sliced bananas before pouring on the rest of the custard. I slathered the cream across the top and garnished with a few leftover banana slices. I put the pie in the fridge overnight and ate it the next day.

THE FINISHED PIE!

Was it good? I have to be honest, it was darn good! Family members agreed – and it seemed genuine, not just a “tell him what he wants to hear so he bakes more pies” sort of way. If I made it again, I’d add more bananas to the middle layer. Or some sort of banana liqueur to the mix into the whipped cream.

ACTUAL SLICE

It may not look just like the recipe picture but do they ever? Those pictured pies aren’t even always edible! Anyway, live and learn. And that’s one pie down, 51 to go!